A First Amendment Mob At 6:30 pm I walk across Church Street from the curb in front of Trinity Church, and descend the stairs of the World Trade Center PATH station, which are about 60 feet wide, as wide as a Broadway stage, so the Port Authority can swallow all the commuters at once and channel them down toward their train like a waterfall. I get to the rim of this commuter-world and feel the echoes in it. This is a mall-like room, suspended over the sacred pit, a weird, liminal non-place. Of course, it's a temporary station, built here to keep the stockbrokers in their flow home, under the river, and out to Jersey. But this is as impermanent as most recent architecture feels. This room was constructed with the speed of a warehouse in Iraq.
I descend into the echoes and hear fragments of the First Amendment Mob rising out of the hurrying clatter of shoes. This is a small turn-out today. I glance around as I speak into my cell phone: the freedom of speech, and of the press, of the right of the people peaceably to assemble. Maybe 30 people today. I can pick out the people in the action from the other cell phone users because the effort to remember the amendment's words slows them down. The last phrase in the amendment can be heard up in the echoes, faster and louder, as the folks are happy to get through the old words and feel their accomplishment: "AND PETITION THE GOVERNMENT FOR REDRESS OF GRIEVANCES." Bill of Rights-a-luiah!!
There they are: the police, already assimilated into the social landscape of spaced-out tourists and down-time commuters. They are so encrusted in special hardware, it's as if a Star Wars convention were going on in a local hotel. The militarization of public space helps the consumer's imagined violence. Except these Ashcroftian Darth Vaders have real guns.
That's the idea, to recite these great forgotten words directly at the place they are trying to make a non-place. Actually, the freedoms are here at Ground Zero still. It is only that they have been mishandled by the Captains of Fear. So recite the words where the super-police hover, and do it like you're a commuter or a tourist, and then leave without doing anything beyond this. Bring the five freedoms to this square mile where the Powerful hope to create an altar to mass murder. If they can suspend the Constitution here, then they can suspend it anywhere. Now a glance at the watch: we're more than halfway to 7 pm. I'm aggressive today, walking as fast as the brokers with their furrowed brows and briefcases. They don't turn to acknowledge a fairly loud cellphonist "RESPECTING THE ESTABLISHMENT OF RELIGION, OR PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCIZE THEREOF; OR ABRIDGING THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH." These guys have been on the stock exchange floor all day, screaming with the rising and falling of fortunes. What I'm doing rarely turns their heads. Although one older man slowed down a bit and seemed to be considering what I was saying...a man with a dignified bearing, carefully combed white hair. I wonder if he isn't a judge from the courthouse on Centre Street. That would be interesting—he must spend every minute of every day translating some aspect of these basic freedoms into the complexity of people living together. And then hearing the amendment out here, in the rubble, where it has been destroyed... But with the rules of the action, I can't strike up a conversation unless he starts it. I stay in character. "You mean you don't know the 1st Amendment? It goes like this: 'Congress shall make no law, regarding the establishment of religion...'" I'm on the escalator next to the judge, he's on the next one over, (there are 7 or 8 together, all going down, we're sinking together under river-level). He remains self-possessed, like judges are, and I'll never know. Maybe he's a rapacious executive from Halliburton. Only two escalators rise in the evening, to bring in the international financial folks, who have to be awake for the Japanese, Chinese, and Indian markets. The people here are from around the world, Americanized second-generation over-achievers, like so many in the ghostly towers above us.
The repetition of such strong words, freedom-words, with that commandment attitude from the founding fathers—Congress Shall Make No Law—becomes a mysterious kind of pleasure. For one thing, it is the strongest thing in this strange gymnasium. Much stronger than the empty suits who make pronouncements about fear, and move billions of dollars around. Much stronger than the police who gather here, bristling with high-tech body-armor. Stronger and more important than the famous gambling casino called Wall Street. Stronger than the boy-king Bush who wants to use 9/11 again for his election, if he can somehow put his arm around that firefighter again, and get his bullhorn up in the air. Almost 7 pm now, and the freedom mob is circling in the open space between the subways unloading from the basements of the city. Now the actioneers have the confidence of their 30 or 40 repetitions of the amendment. We're all saying it easily now. We are circling one another, knowing that we are doing this together. I suppose that the freedoms of worship, of speech, of the press, of assembly and the right to change the government—those five freedoms—should be alive in us always. When they are endangered, then we must we circle and peaceably assemble, as the Constitution promises. That's what we do at 7 pm, and we use the echo chamber for effect. Louder and louder, a group of Americans doing something intentionally. The police step toward us, but we are reciting the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. ––Reverend Billy 27 May 2004 |
